[FRIAM] of straw and steel

Mon Jul 5 16:28:56 EDT 2021

I never paid significant $$ for any of the 4 graduate programs I was
enrolled in.  In those days it was said that if you could be admitted you
would get a fellowship or assistantship which would cover your tuition and
provide a small stipend.  I had a wife and kid throughout.

Have things changed?  Note that I only had experience with STEM programs.
I am sure it was different for professional programs like law and
medicine.  What about humanities programs?  My daughter had some kind of
assistantship in a graduate program in Latin
American Literature in 1987 or so.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Jul 5, 2021, 1:14 PM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com> wrote:

> Am I the only one who thinks all higher education (before grad school--and
> maybe even that too) should be free in a rich democratic (sort of)
> society?  I'm not sure how to avoid the issue of who gets to go--merit is
> the sticky wicket.  I also think we need to re-institute the draft.  Both
> of these initiatives might help to even things out.
>
> On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 10:38 AM Barry MacKichan <
> barry.mackichan at mackichan.com> wrote:
>
>> I can endorse both Sandel’s *Tyrrany of Merit* and Wilkerson’s *Caste*.
>> Also I highly recommend Wilkerson’s earlier book, *The Warmth of Other
>> Suns* about the great migration in the early 20th century of blacks from
>> the south to the north and California. An interesting factoid is how
>> important Lordsburg was to those going to California.
>>
>> I haven’t decided what to *do* with the knowledge I got from these
>> books, but it is hard to ignore it.
>>
>> —Barry
>>
>> On 2 Jul 2021, at 21:33, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> EricS,
>>
>>
>>
>> Have you looked at Sandel’s *Tyranny of Merit* or Wilkerson’s *Caste*?
>>
>>
>>
>> If on thinks hard enough about “merit” it becomes deeply confusing.  The
>> idea of Merit is something that I got on my own, right?  So working back
>> from now to birth whence exactly did I get that merit.  Even what I got
>> from my genes was random right.  At what point do get to embrace my merit
>> as of my own making?  So far as me, myself, is concerned, it’s all luck all
>> the way down. That is what the declaration of independence means when it
>> says that all [humans] are created equal.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick Thompson
>>
>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
>> *Sent:* Friday, July 2, 2021 7:47 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam at redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] of straw and steel
>>
>>
>>
>> I think there is some version of this for college tuitions, too, though I
>> am partly muddy-headed and what I say next will probably fail the logical
>> map at some points.
>>
>>
>>
>> The general idea is some combination of what is in Ginsberg’s book
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Faculty-Benjamin-Ginsberg/dp/0199975434
>>
>> but even more so in some article I read in J. Higher Ed or something
>> (which I have not succeeded in finding and I need now for other projects),
>> to the effect that:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1. There is been a massive cumulative re-allocation of money out of
>> need-based grants and to merit-based scholarships over the past 40 years or
>> so.
>>
>> 2. Sounds good, of course: who could be against rewarding merit.
>>
>> 3. Except that, de facto, what one largely rewards is preparation, which
>> is a proxy for parental wealth and membership in one of the culture’s
>> preferred classes, races, regions, or what-have-you.  The part of this that
>> I am pretty sure is in Ginsberg is also fishing for parental wealth by
>> building snazzy student centers, on-campus water parks, etc.  All that at
>> enormous cost.  The punchline of all this is that WHEN THE BUSINESSMEN TAKE
>> OVER THE CONCEPT OF THE UNIVERSITY, THE UNIVERSITY BECOMES A BUSINESS.  So,
>> monies spent, such as tuition deferment whether called grant or
>> scholarships, is in their worldview VENTURE CAPITAL.  (That was what was in
>> the JHE article.)  And the return that venture capital is seeking is
>> parental tuition money.
>>
>>
>>
>> So how does this map to Glen’s EricC’s comments: The nominal tuition is
>> very high (4x what it was in the 1970s, per faculty actually teaching or
>> doing research).  That high tuition isn’t actually cost-received from most
>> parents, because a significant fraction of it was spent either giving their
>> kids scholarships, building water parks and student centers, or whatever.
>> However: if they had given it in need-based grants, they wouldn’t be
>> getting _anything_ from the parents.  So in the businessman’s world, the
>> investment gathered a maximized monetary profit, which was the criterion
>> for how to make it.
>>
>>
>>
>> As in EricC’s point below, there will be some very rich parents with kids
>> so lazy or dull that they aren’t well-prepared even with opportunities, so
>> one can’t give them scholarships, and those will pay the sticker price.
>> Those are the ones who buy the article at $19, or medical products or
>> services at list price.  High profit but small margin on them.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> In all the recent and ongoing conversations about tuition jubilee or free
>> college in the US, I worry that everything real and solvable gets ruled out
>> before we ever start, because the above characterization of the real
>> business model isn’t front and center.  Not very different for medical
>> products and services (I am trying not to use the completely bleached
>> expression “health care”), though that has been around long enough that a
>> fuller story is not so uncommon to find.
>>
>>
>>
>> It is right that we have mortgaged a whole generation of kids with
>> unplayable tuition loans, and probably somebody should eat that cost.  Kind
>> of like when German banks bought junk mortgage bonds in the US, they should
>> actually have been allowed to fail for having not done due diligence,
>> rather than being bailed out by a government that then had to get the money
>> to float them by leaning on somebody else (the Irish, the Italians).  That
>> of course doesn’t really work for the reasons correctly given in Minsky’s
>> Ratchet
>>
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Stabilizing-Unstable-Economy-Hyman-Minsky/dp/0071592997
>>
>> But the threat of it somehow should be used, while the problem is
>> building, to keep the banks doing due diligence, and to stop the schools
>> from hiking tuition and spending to profit on the margin, or medical
>> products and services skyrocketing as a negotiating point against insurance
>> companies, etc.  The system either gets fixed as a system, or not at all.
>>
>>
>>
>> There must be a really great book somewhere, which gets the data and the
>> economics better than I can, and also explains this clearly enough that it
>> can be an everyman’s book.  It’s messy and a bait indirect, but it’s not so
>> hard as to be incomprehensible.  Does anybody know such a book?
>>
>>
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 3, 2021, at 5:51 AM, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Something Glen's analysis,  there are MANY things in the modern economy
>> that fit things model,  including healthcare.
>>
>>
>>
>> The insurance companies demand a steep discount in procedures.
>>
>> The hospital's have costs to cover.
>>
>> The only possible consequence is to dramatically increase the sticker
>> price.  There hospital doesn't expect someone to pay that much for a major
>> procedure,  they expect bulk buyers (i.e., insurance companies) to drive
>> buisness at ther bulk price. (If some random person does pay sticker price
>> every so often,  all the better, but that's not ther primary goal.)
>>
>>
>>
>> Mattress companies, clothing stores,  etc. that have massive sales 3/4th
>> of the year are doing the same sort of thing.
>>
>>
>>
>> See also my continuous complaints about the "Big Mac Index". Only a small
>> % of Big Macs in the U.S. are purchased at sicker price.  The sticker price
>> is primarily intended as something to discount off of.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:56 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe. But remember, despite the prescriptive linguists out there: a)
>> "troll" is not an insult and b) it can be accidental.
>>
>> All 3 of Russ' "people with grants", Barry's "rent seeking", and Pieter's
>> "publishing profits are bad for science" responses are a trawler's delight!
>> Rather than talk about the Strawman fallacy and it's variations, we're
>> talking ... [sigh] again ... about capitalism and money.
>>
>> Call it naivete if you want. But it was a very effective troll.
>>
>> On 6/30/21 7:47 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>> > Oh, I see.  The point is to make getting the individual item so
>> expensive that it just balances driving to the library (or doing ILL) with
>> subscribing to the Journal.  It's pure manipulation; costs have nothing to
>> do with it.
>> >
>> > Glen, I think you persistently confuse naivete with trolling.
>>
>> --
>> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>>
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>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @merle110
>
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